The Problematic Issue Of Gay Positive Athletes

Recently, college football player Michael Sam loudly announced his homosexuality in defiance of good sportsmanship and the beloved memory of Vince Lombardi. While there’s been a lot of dialog and very insightful commentary on the issue thus far, I felt that there was an important voice that was missing: mine. I’ve decided to craft a piece of thinking on the issue, not only for my fans, but for myself, and my children, and myself.

As the self-appointed Generalissimo of social justice, many would assume that I would be in support of professional homosexual athletes – and I’ll admit, that at first, I was totally on board. But after careful consideration, I realize that gay sportsmen are extremely problematic, troubling, gross, and literally just can’t even.

The problem here is that homosexual athletes send a very negative message to children. I’ll elaborate on this in a second, but for now, allow me to digress and talk about history.

Remember the nineties? Do you remember it? Doug, Rugrats, Rocket Power. A time before economic bubbles, where our bellies grew fat on supersized meals and a distended faith in the system. We lived in complacent serenity, blissfully unaware of anyone outside of the middle class, content and occupied, like the people on that space ship in Wall-E. It was a perfect time for over privileged adults and their budding narcissistic offspring. It was a perfect time for all.

In the 1990s, parents finally hit the nail on the head. We figured out that the best way to motivate a child was to isolate them at a very young age and tell them of their boundless potential. The key to creating good, productive citizens, was pulling them aside and telling them that they could be a doctor, or a basketball player, or even the President. Never mind the fact that they were still learning capital letters, the alphabet could wait. These kids were going to fix the world – each and every one of them.

The experiment was a complete success. We effectively created a generation where everyone was the best and no one was the worst. Bullying came to screeching halt, test scores soared, and Columbine never happened.

But, what does this have to do with allowing gays to play in professional sports? It has everything to do with it. Why? Because we lied to those kids. Most of them were shit–I know mine are. Just yesterday my 12 year old, Mason, asked me if flies were a type of bird. Instead of being able to beat him with a shoe, convention dictates that I should delicately correct him and encourage his inquisitive nature.

We sold these kids on the idea of themselves and they’re now finding out now that they bought a lemon. No airbags, no seatbelts, no cup holders. They’re looking around, realizing that their parents had BMW’s at their age, and they’re stuck driving a Tercel that they can’t even afford to insure. Now in adulthood, they know for certain they can’t be President, and the sense of superiority evaporates. If the child’s only source of confidence was an elevated sense of himself, rather than a negative view of others, they’re in for a rude awakening.

If a child doesn’t have anyone to look down on, at some point, he’s going to realize he’s at the bottom. This is the problem. This is why shitty, untalented kids, can’t be allowed to see gay people as celebrities. If someone from an oppressed class is able to achieve things that they can’t achieve as able bodied, heterosexual white males, what do you think that will do to their psychology? It will fuck them up big time.

You see, I raised my children without religion, and without anything to believe in, all my children have is their own ego. My children need that sense of superiority over gays so that they can continue to live somewhat satisfactory lives, despite the fact that Mason’s only aspiration is to play Super Smash Brothers on a “professional level.” His words, not mine.

Watching my son struggle with the fact that homosexuals are doing better than him almost makes me regret raising him without God. The benefit of religion is it provides people with the necessary existential faith to continue living. The promise of an afterlife and a moral compass laid out before adherents help us cope with the fact that life is chaotic and terminal, and it provides us with hope when our lives are ostensibly worthless. Faith isn’t for the weak, it’s for the realistic.

One of the most difficult aspects of atheism is not killing yourself. Why continue to exist if there’s not an invisible man in the sky telling you that you’re doing a good job in your administrative assistant position? Are Upworthy articles and puppy calendars enough to keep going? Of course not, you need to have faith. That’s why it’s extremely important for an increasingly secular society to adopt the good parts of religion – the underlying faith – to not kill ourselves in those brief moments of clarity when we realize that our social media presence means nothing and that we’ll all die alone. So how do we do that? By co-opting the discriminatory and prejudiced aspects of religion so we have people to feel superior to. I don’t dislike gays because I want to, I dislike gays because if I did not, I wouldn’t be able to continue to exist as a fun mom and a teacher at a retarded school.

So let’s be mean to gay people, for the kids.